“Perhaps so; well, let us understand one another. Are you afraid?”
“Suppose we all are, master,” said the man.
“And you want to go back?”
“No, not one of us, master.”
Here there was a growl of satisfaction.
“But you object to going forward, my men?”
“Well, you see it’s like this, master: the boys here all want to work for you, and young Master Bart, and Miss Maude there; but they think you ought to go where it’s safe-like, and not where we’re ’most sure to be tortured and scalped. There’s lots o’ places where the whites are in plenty.”
“And where every gully and mountain has been ransacked for metals, my lad. I want to go where white men have never been before, and search the mountains there.”
“For gold and silver and that sort of thing, master?”
“Yes, my lads.”